Meaning & use
forehead
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Meaning
nouncountable
The flat area of the face above the eyes and below the hair.
Grammar: Use it with a possessive or an article: his forehead, a high forehead.
Patterns
- a high/low/broad forehead
- wrinkle one's forehead
- touch/kiss someone's forehead
She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
He has a high forehead, like his father.
The nurse felt the child's forehead to check for a fever.
Word forms
| plural | foreheads |
|---|
Common combinations
- a high forehead
- The portrait shows a man with a high forehead and dark eyes.
- wrinkle one's forehead
- She wrinkled her forehead, confused by the question.
- kiss someone on the forehead
- He kissed his daughter on the forehead and said goodnight.
- wipe one's forehead
- The workers stopped to wipe their foreheads in the heat.
Synonyms and how they differ
Commonly confused: forehead or brow?
forehead vs brow
Brow often means the eyebrow rather than the forehead, so 'a furrowed brow' suggests worry shown by the eyebrows, not the whole forehead.
Practice
She put her hand on the baby's ______ to see if it was warm.
Choose one answer.
The forehead is the flat part above the eyes where you would feel for a fever; the eyebrow is just the line of hair, and the hairline is where the hair starts, so neither fits the action of checking temperature.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “forehead”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.